


The Play's The Thing

by Dame_Lazarus



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Gen, POV Jaime Lannister, Post-LSH, Romantic Tension, Sexual Tension, The Tales of Dunk and Egg, bet you didn’t have this on your Winds of Winter bingo card, book canon, fairy tales (in-universe), generally a lot of tension, having feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25755784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dame_Lazarus/pseuds/Dame_Lazarus
Summary: They got pelted with fruit, pits, bread, and once even a full glass of ale, straight into Jaime’s face. It didn’t matter, though: the performances were a means to an end.After saving Podrick and Hyle from the clutches of Lady Stoneheart, Jaime and Brienne find themselves captives again, this time by a mysterious man who wants them to do only one thing: perform.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 75
Kudos: 154
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	The Play's The Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EryiScrye (SomberSecrets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomberSecrets/gifts).



> I'm thrilled to be a part of the Jaime x Brienne summer fic exchange. Many thanks to Beta for her feedback and to Mutual for answering some canon questions for me. Prompts after the jump.

Jaime woke to a sharp kick in his ribs. He rolled onto his back on the clammy cave floor, gasping. A spear was pointed in his face. No, his arm. No, at both— _two spears_.

He twisted his neck to the side. In the dim light of the fire, burned low to embers, he could see the others similarly preoccupied. Hyle Hunt, pressed face-first into the stone wall, a spear at his back and blood trickling down his cheek. Young Podrick Payne, pulled to his feet, two shriveled and pale creatures holding him fiercely at the sides. Pod’s face was paler than his captors’ were, and though he tried to arrange his expression into one of bravado, his eyes still glistened with terror.

And then there was Brienne: up on her knees, two spears behind her and one at her scarred throat. On a better day, she could have thrown these little men out of her way and snapped the shafts holding up their blades with her bare hands. But after being battered across the Riverlands and hung by the corpse of her dead liege lady—after luring him and cajoling him to attack outlaws in the dead of night to free the boy and the damned useless hedge knight—after fleeing, bloodied, with death on their heels—she was not in the shape to resist. The exhaustion was writ all over her face.

Jaime felt it, too. And what did resistance get him over compliance, anyway? A severed hand or a vengeful corpse who wanted his head? The two differed only on the face of it. So he put his hands up in surrender. He wasn’t one to believe in the gods, but he would let them decide this one on his behalf. He saw no point in pretending otherwise.

The creature pointing his weapon at Jaime’s face kicked him again. “Up!” 

Jaime scrambled to his feet, and the crowd closed in on them. There were dozens of these little men—slightly bigger than Tyrion, whiter in skin and hair than any Targaryen, and surprisingly menacing, despite their lean, skeletal frames.

“This is your fault, you know,” Hunt hissed at him as the spear-wielders jostled them alongside one another. 

“I’m not the one who was supposed to be on watch,” Jaime hissed back. They were meant to spend just one night in this narrow cavern and then return to Jaime’s army at first light. They’d be hard up to fend off the Brotherhood again in their state; gods know that the wench needed a maester, barely strung together with bandages as she was.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Hunt said.

Jaime felt his feet speed forward, their march now descending deeper into the dark cave. 

Of course he knew. He’d known for days, since Lady Brienne stumbled into his tent, cagey and in tatters. That had been his fault, and so was this, whatever awaited them in the cave’s twisting depths.

* * *

The legion of tiny strange men herded them into a smooth alcove after a long, stumbling walk in the dark. Two of them lit a torch just outside the entrance, as the rest stood back to watch the four captives be shoved to the ground and locked by their ankles to rusty shackles staked into the ground. 

Slowly, their captors filtered out of the alcove and, save two men left to guard the party from outside, they dissipated into parts unknown. Jaime could swear he could hear murmuring rise up outside, in the warren of tunnels. Perhaps that was his imagination. The strange men had been silent except to yell at them to stand and walk.

Podrick sniffled, shuddering, just to Jaime’s left. Poor lad. He tried to imagine soft, sweet Tommen getting through the things the boy had in just the past few weeks, with only a few tears to show for it, and couldn’t. “How old are you, boy? Nine? Ten?”

“T-twelve,” Pod stuttered. Ah. Perhaps he should have guessed higher.

He patted the squire genially on the back. “Well, lad, you’ve had more adventure by twelve than most knights see in a lifetime.” He felt the boy sit up taller beside him.

“I could do with much less adventure,” Hunt grunted from across the way. “A fire and a good meal in the hall is all I wish for now.” The man looked over at Brienne, trying to catch her eye, but she was leaning back against the stone, eyes closed, breathing slow. The wench was not asleep, nor resting peacefully, he could tell.

Jaime leaned back himself. They were in a rather impossible situation, it was true, but no more impossible than the one that led them here. If they could cut prisoners free just feet from the sulking reanimated corpse of Catelyn Stark, they could surely find their way out of a cave filled with men the size of a twelve-year-old. He felt around for rocks to break through his chains, which felt old enough to give way after a few strikes. There were none to be found, though; their captors must have thought of this. His golden hand would be too soft. He could smash his leg irons against the stone wall, he supposed. _I’d have to crawl my way out of here._ The mighty Kingslayer, down to one working hand and two broken ankles.

They sat for a time in the dank quiet. The only noise accompanying them was a steady drip somewhere far off. Their guards made no noise of their own.

Soon, a new little man arrived at the entrance. He was bald and his wrinkled skin hung off his weak chin like a grizzled hunting dog. In the flickering torchlight Jaime could see him grinning wide with the few teeth left in his mouth.

Once inside their alcove, their visitor dropped a sack onto the floor. “At last!” he crowed, clapping his hands. 

Jaime looked over at Brienne. The wench had slid her gaze to him as well. Orders to stand and move, they could understand. Weapons in the face, they could work with. But this—it was unpredictable, and he misliked it.

Out of the bag the new pale man pulled a rusty shirt of single-ring mail, and tossed it to Jaime. He barely caught it; the heavy rust scraped roughly across his palm. The man tossed another mail shirt to Hunt, and a long belted sackcloth tunic to young Podrick. Then, with a grin, he pulled an enormous wad of deep red fabric from the bottom of his bag.

“For the lady,” he said, grinning even more widely. The wench caught it and held it up in front of her, frowning: it was an enormous dress, clearly made for a copiously fat woman. At least there was enough fabric to cover her ankles.

“Dress,” their costumer ordered. He gathered his sack and left them speechless.

Hunt shrugged his mail shirt over his head. The armholes gaped nearly to his knees. Whoever had it made had been far more barrel-chested. His own rusty mail fit snugly enough. 

Jaime turned toward Podrick, who was struggling to fit the tunic he’d been given over his own shirt. “Hunt, help the boy pull it off. He’ll need to shed that underlayer first.” He hoped the other man, useless as he was, would take the hint to turn his back to the wench, who had been watching them dress stiffly against the stone. She’d had enough humiliation already than to be made to dress in front of them.

It worked. With the two of them busy helping Podrick, he could hear the wench sigh heavily and toss a bit of fabric angrily to the ground. After Pod was safely dressed and belted in, she sighed again.

“Perhaps I should have kept my shirt on too,” she said awkwardly. Jaime turned to face her. Even in the weak sliver of torchlight from outside their cell, he could make out how her face reddened beneath the bandages. The dress was far too big on her, as he’d supposed; the blood-red fabric trailed far past her feet and hung diaphanously around her hips. The sleeves were capped, for just around the shoulders, but on Brienne they drooped down her upper arms. She clutched the loose bodice to her chest. _Let’s hope that dress was scavenged,_ Jaime thought. A woman that size would have been difficult to drag through these tunnels.

“At least the color is far more flattering than what the Boltons put you in,” he said. The wench hugged the top tighter to her chest. She scarcely needed to bother. He remembered the modest curve of her breasts in the waters of the bath they’d shared. It may as well have been a million years ago instead of a few moons past.

“Do you want my belt, Ser?” Podrick asked. “My lady.”

Jaime doubted it would fit around her thick waist. “Hold the bodice where you want it, wench, and turn your back to us,” he instructed. “Perhaps we can devise something.”

She obliged, and the dress fell down, revealing the pale expanse of her freckled, muscled back. Jaime stepped forward, as far as his chained feet would allow. He bunched one side of the loose fabric and pulled it back tight. Then he reached, unthinking, to grab the other side and do the same, only to stop himself. 

“Er, Hunt,” he said. “Perhaps a hand?” _Who’s the useless one now?_ Hunt gripped the other side of the dress tight alongside him, then reached back to take Podrick’s belt from the boy’s outstretched hand. Together, the two of them held the dress back for Brienne as Hunt tied a bow around the gathered cloth. The effect wasn’t fashionable, and the sleeves still gaped a bit down her arms, but it was at least covering her in the main places a lady should be covered.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her gaze on the floor.

“Come now—if we are meant to die together in this godsforsaken cavern, we can at least be cordial,” Jaime said, patting her lightly on her uncovered shoulder. Her skin was as smooth as he remembered, even clammy with dirt and the damp of this place.

“How cordial of you to volunteer to die alongside us this time,” Hyle sneered. 

Jaime gave him a smile that he hoped did not look in the least bit friendly. “I’d much prefer you volunteer to stop speaking, but I’m trying to keep the peace.” 

Brienne turned to face them both, a look that reminded him of his childhood septas on her face. But before she could say anything, a rumble of footsteps echoed down the tunnel, and her whole body grew tense.

Jaime turned to the entrance of their alcove just in time to see several of their pasty spear-wielding friends crowd inside. A handful restrained Podrick and Hunt roughly by the shoulders, weapons at their throats, while still others knelt down to unlock the irons on the pair’s ankles. Once undone, Hunt and the boy were pulled backwards, pale, bony hands snaking out all around them.

“No!” Brienne screamed. The wench lunged forward, long arms grasping at Podrick and the other man. Her chains rasped and rattled with the effort. From between the two, the flat end of a spear handle poked into the cell and into Brienne. She cried out sharply and fell back, clutching at her right arm. She’d been moving it gingerly ever since their fight; he’d wager there was an injury there she wasn’t willing to acknowledge.

“Not to worry,” one of the small men croaked as she started to climb back up to her feet. “They’ll be back, and more alive than when they left.”

With that, their companions were whisked away in a murmur of low voices and shuffling feet.

Brienne rose all the way up. She was shaking, and the dress had loosened somewhat, the sleeves and neckline draping lower on her freckled chest. She swallowed hard and clapped her left hand to her breastbone, holding the garment in place.

“Turn again, my lady,” Jaime bade her. “I can hold it in place with this useless false hand and you can reach back to tighten the bow.”

He could feel her ragged breaths as he held back the dress. She drew in sharply as she wrenched back her tender arm to join her good one.

“You seem to have another injury that you failed to mention,” he murmured as they worked. Not that she had been forthcoming about the bite on her face or the rope marks on their necks, either. 

“It’s old,” she said, “and healing.”

The dress back in place, they dropped their hands. “Once we get the lay of things, we’ll work out how to get out of here,” Jaime said. “It won’t do to have gone through all that to lose anyone here, and you’ll need someone to look at those wounds. _All_ of them.”

She turned back to face him, although her eyes fixed at a point just above his own. “Ser Jaime,” she began, speaking low and quickly. “I am sorry for...all this. I couldn’t think of another way—they were harming the boy, and there were said to be spies in your camp, so I thought I could pr—“

“Hush, wench,” he said, his gut squirming. “Apologies aren’t useful when you’re in mortal peril.” He’d fumed when he learned that the wench deceived him, but those fires burned out quickly when he saw the tears in her eyes and the matching wounds on all their throats. _If not for me, would you be in such a state?_ Hunt wasn’t wrong. He had as much to apologize for as her, if not more. She hadn’t harmed a hair on his head this whole time.

* * *

Their captors stayed true to their word. A little more than an hour later, a band of the pale little men returned Podrick and Hunt to their cell. The pair looked uninjured, though shaken.

“Where did they take you?” Brienne asked as two young-looking men with thin arms bent at her and Jaime’s feet to release them from their leg irons. Another thrust a spear in warning into her face, but she ducked it, craning to catch Hunt’s eye.

“It’s...well,” the man said, shaking his head. The captors fastened the chains onto Podrick and goaded Jaime and Brienne out of the alcove.

“It’s not so bad, my lady, ser,” Podrick offered, as they looked back.

Outside of their cell stood about ten of the small men, each with a spear in their hand. He felt the poke of sharp blades into his back, edging him forward down the dimly lit tunnel. He and the wench towered over them. They were two giants in lurid dress, cowed by a swarming mass of ants. 

They did not walk far before reaching their destination. Around a corner, the tunnel widened to reveal a bright grotto. Long stone points dipped from the high roof of the space, like natural columns. Small pools of dark water scattered around the ground reflected torches placed along the walls.

And at the center of the room: a man. He was ghostly white and squat like the others, but nowhere near as thin. He was practically oozing out the sides of the chair in which he sat, a seat made of smooth stone that could have easily been hewed straight out of the rock itself. Before him was a low wooden table, piled high with platters of food: grapes, slightly wrinkled plums, thick slabs of blue-veined cheese. Jaime’s stomach rumbled a bit. It had been far too long since the last time he’d eaten. He’d gone soft as the well-kept leader of the Lannister army. 

“Greetings,” the man called to them. Their escorts nudged them up onto a flat stone slab, slightly raised up above where he sat. Next to him, Brienne drew in a sharp breath. He turned to look at her, checking for a spear pushed too forcefully into her flesh, but he saw she was staring down at their host’s side. A glimmer in the flickering light caught his eye: gold Lannister lions, crimson rubies, and the black-red dappled Valyrian blade. Her sword. Oathkeeper. 

“Welcome to my court,” the man said, holding his meaty arms wide. Jaime noticed a circlet of tiny strung pebbles nesting in his wispy white hair. 

“I take it you are the king of these parts?” Jaime asked. There was nowhere he could go without meeting a godsforsaken king with plans for him, it seemed. _Where do I have to go to be free of them, beyond the Wall_?

“Aye, that I am. The Stone King, they call me. King of the Hidden Men.” He bit into a plum and sucked the juice off his palm. Even without his crown or his proclamation, his appetites would have given him away. 

“A pity that the other kings of the realm do not know of you,” Jaime said. “You’ve missed out on a lively set of wars that they’ve been staging above the ground.” 

The Stone King threw back his head and laughed. The shrill shrieking sound echoed throughout the grotto. Even the battalion of men who had led them here joined in. Their low titters rumbled up from where they’d stationed themselves, on either side of the rock on which Jaime and Brienne stood.

“Yes, yes—we are glad indeed you have joined us here. It has been an age since we have had visitors, and even longer still since we’ve had a lady. _If_ that’s what you are.” He squinted at Brienne as he said it. She straightened and lifted her chin defiantly. Jaime contemplated jumping down and striking him with his false hand like he’d done with Connington back at Harrenhal. Such behavior would be unbecoming of a _visitor_ , though, so he held himself back. 

“What do you say, lads?” the Stone King asked, his eyes raking over his subjects. “A tale of Florian and Jonquil? Perhaps you should play as fair Jonquil and the woman Florian—she’s big enough!”

Perhaps. The time she caught him after he swooned in the baths came to mind. But then he saw her rigid back out of the corner of his eye, and he clenched his arms by his sides. “Nonsense. This wench is as true a lady as Jonquil or any other.”

The Stone King and his Hidden Men chuckled again. “Very then, Ser Florian. Begin!”

Jaime turned to Brienne, who was just staring at him—brow furrowed, mouth slightly agape. “Lady Jonquil,” he said, extending his false hand. “Well met.”

The wench looked at him as though he was offering her his severed hand instead. The Stone King pounded his fists on his table. She jumped.

“Say something,” he said under his breath. “Anything.” 

She reached out her hand, unsteadily, to take his, but then pulled it back. “S-ser,” she said. 

“Louder!” the Stone King thundered. 

“Ser,” Brienne tried again. “It is an honor to meet you, though I must be on my way.” _Smart_ , he thought. Jonquil was not easily wooed in the songs.

“So soon? But we have just met, and I have been bewitched by your eyes. I have found none like them in all the Seven Kingdoms.” And that was the truth, a little of it sneaking into their play-acting.

Brienne looked at the ground. “I am afraid so,” she murmured.

Suddenly a half-eaten plum launched into the side of her face with a wet smack. She scowled as it slid down her bare shoulder to the folds of her dress and down to the ground. 

“Bah, terrible,” the Stone King grumbled. “Take them back to their cell. On the morrow, you two best give me a proper show.” The guards marched up to the stage and herded them back out to the tunnels.

“Well,” Jaime said, as they were tossed back into the cell and re-chained, “they certainly didn’t cover _that_ when I was training to become a knight.”

* * *

Though he could not know for certain, down under the ground as he was, Jaime felt their captors settle them into a daily routine. A very small man, spear in each hand, would come to prod them all awake. One day, early on, Hunt charged at him. He plainly hoped to overpower him and take his weapons, but the creature was remarkably agile. Hunt ended up on his back, nose bleeding, clutching his ribs. The man had his foot on Hunt’s chest, two spears to his throat. 

Hunt’s outburst didn’t seem to put them in any danger, though. The routine continued apace. They wordlessly agreed not to resist. Not until they had better options, anyway. He knew nothing of these Hidden Men, but as long as they didn’t seem to be killing anyone, it would behoove them to watch first and act later.

Their days in the Stone Kingdom blurred into one another. Behind their greeter, the short, agile man with his two spears, always stood another, with bread, water, and salted meats, which they were meant to eat with their hands. The man who brought them the food would return a short while later with several compatriots, and they would be herded out single-file to a cavern with a knee-deep lake. There they would be made to relieve themselves on the shore, strip, and bathe in near darkness. The wench always waded out as far from them all as she could get away with, though no one, save Jaime, was paying her any mind. At least they changed the bandage on her face for her. He could not see the wound, but their conditions were ripe for injuries to fester. Hopefully someone saw to her arm, too. 

A few hours would pass from when they were returned to their alcove and when they had to dress in their costumes and begin their work as mummers. It turned out that Podrick and Hunt had been tasked with playing Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg, the secret Targaryen prince who would grow up to be King Aegon the Unlikely. Jaime had loved the stories of their adventures as a boy, and Brienne and Hunt knew them just as well as he. Young Podrick, though, had heard little of the tales, despite his line of work. 

“You could act out the two of them viewing the first day of the tourney at Ashford Castle,” Brienne suggested the first day. “All you’d need to do is climb up on Hyle’s shoulders and narrate what’s going on with the joust.”

“But how will I do that when there’s no joust happening?” Podrick asked. “I haven’t even seen one before.” 

Jaime, the only one of them who had come of age in a time when a knight proved himself in tourneys rather than in battle, then found himself crosslegged in front of all three, retelling the story of his first competition and the last few jousts he competed in. “You are welcome to regale our Stone King with the story of Ser Loras Tyrell unhorsing me, as long as I get many blows in first.” Brienne snorted softly beside them. _Yes, wench, do rub it in how you defeated him and won a melee._ She had been full of barely-contained mirth telling him that story, even though they were both prisoners at the time.

Hunt had his suggestions to improve the Dunk and Egg performance as well. “Perhaps the two of you could join us next time,” he said a few days in. “Our golden Lannister can play Prince Aerion and Lady Brienne can be Tanselle-Too-Tall.” Ser Duncan beat the shit out of Prince Aerion for hurting Tanselle at her puppet stand during his first tourney. It was plain what Hunt was playing at: him the rescuer, Brienne the damsel in distress. In truth it had been the reverse, which amused Jaime greatly.

“I don’t think that is a good idea,” Brienne said quickly.

“Why not?” Hunt grinned. “You’re certainly tall enough.”

“We don’t know enough about this king yet to start meddling,” she replied. “We’ll follow his lead for now.”

“Guess you’ll just need to use your imagination,” Jaime told him. “I’m sure if you look hard enough you’re bound to turn one up.”

“You don’t have to be so nasty to him,” Brienne said, later that day, in a stretch where Hunt and Podrick were off performing for the Stone King. “Hyle has behaved honorably to me this whole time.”

“He does not have honorable motives, my lady.” Hunt had casually proposed marriage to her as they set up their fire, the night they got captured by the Hidden Men. Jaime thought perhaps it was out of gratitude for her brave rescue, but then he started to go on about how they should marry before her next injury rendered her infertile and unable to claim her birthright. He gathered from Brienne’s stiff response that this was not the first time he’d broached the topic. If he hadn’t been injured already, Jaime would have decked the man.

Brienne sighed. “I have told him he has no chance at my hand.” 

“And still he persists.”

“He is literally a prisoner here. What else would you have him do?” 

_Disappear_ , Jaime thought uncharitably. Brienne was out here risking her life and he had the gall to try to pay court. At a time like this.

They had plenty to discuss outside of Hyle Hunt, thankfully. The Stone King kept them playing various iterations of Florian and Jonquil, and they needed to coordinate. They both knew the stories. Florian rescues Jonquil from bandits. Florian watches Jonquil from afar, as she bathes in a pool. (The wench refused to do that one.) Jonquil gives Florian her favor to fight in a melee. Brienne was better at coming up with lines by the day. Sometimes she was so convincing as the pure maiden that Jaime forgot about her hulking form and her battered face and found himself staring into the deep blue of her eyes.

Still, the Stone King was displeased with their performance. They got pelted with fruit, pits, bread, and once even a full glass of ale, straight into Jaime’s face. It didn’t matter, though: the performances were a means to an end. 

After Jaime and Brienne returned to their cell, their captors always began preparing them for bed. They would bring them another meal, take them to the lakeside privy once more, and then chain them up again, with an admonition to sleep.

New guards would come a few hours later and Jaime always took the commotion to sidle up to Brienne. It didn’t hurt that Hunt positioned himself near the door and always snorted loudly.

“How many men today watched beside him?” Jaime always whispered. 

“Sixteen today, like usual,” she’d whisper back. 

“Plus the six who brought us. And the two guards,” Jaime would add.

At long last, they spotted a change: Brienne only saw ten men in the grotto, and only four escorted them. The next day, the banquet was piled higher than ever, with grapes and loaves of bread and multiple kinds of cheese. 

“The men must leave to get more food,” Jaime whispered later, in what passed for the night. Hunt grunted and rolled over in his sleep, his mouth temporarily closing and leaving their cell quiet. Brienne nodded at him. 

That was their opening. Now they just need to wait.

* * *

Some days or weeks or months into their captivity, the pruny costumer from their first day in the Stone Kingdom came to them with a new sack. Inside were two thick woolen cloaks, which he tossed to Podrick and Hunt. 

“What’s all this?” Jaime asked after the man had left. 

Podrick was clasping the cloak around his neck. “We had been planning to play Ser Duncan and Egg on their way North to Winterfell, so I asked the K-king for cloaks to make it more real,” he said. “It’s been cold in here when I sleep, so I thought this might help. We can share, if you want, since they only brought two!”

Hyle grandly lifted the side of his cloak up to Brienne, but she shrank away, head down. “I’m quite all right. Save it for yourself.” 

The event must have planted an idea in Brienne’s mind. As their performance came to an end, Jaime’s rusty-mail-clad Florian on his knee before Brienne’s towering Jonquil, she turned to the Stone King and bowed. 

“I beg your pardon, your Grace,” she called to him, her voice high and clear. “But I wonder if we could discuss a possible story for tomorrow’s performance.”

The king waved his goblet of wine at her to indicate she could continue. She bowed again.

“On the island where I grew up, there is a legend of a perfect knight named Galladon—a warrior so virtuous that the Maiden herself fell in love with him. She gave him a magical sword, so powerful that no weapon was its match. We could perform that story for you, if you wish, your Grace.” 

The Stone King crossed his chubby arms and leaned back to regard her. “I do not know that story. It’s from your island, you say?”

Brienne nodded. “Tarth. Off the Stormlands Coast.” 

He clapped his hands. “I consent. You may perform it for me.”

Brienne bowed a third time. Her face was flushed, but if one did not know her, it may not have been as obvious as it was to Jaime. She took a deep inhale and clasped her hands tightly behind her back. “There is just one thing. I’d like to request my sword, to stand in for the magic sword.” She gestured with her chin to Oathkeeper, which hung languidly by its swordbelt on the arm of the king’s stone throne.

Jaime tried to keep himself from reacting. Was she mad? They were prisoners and she was asking the king to arm them.

“This sword? It belongs to _you_?” The Stone King was incredulous for a different reason.

Brienne opened her mouth to speak. Jaime could see the anger straining in the muscles of her neck. _Calm yourself, wench. Best not let on how well you use the thing._

“She can’t wield it, of course,” Jaime burst in. He still knelt on the ground. “She finds that dreaded story romantic and likes the look of the gold and jewels on her person. She hopes one day to bestow it on her own perfect knight, if she ever can encounter such a creature.” 

Jaime stood up and turned to face the king. “You’ve nothing to worry about. My companions are all uncommonly poor swordsmen, and I’m in no condition to use the thing, either.” He held up his golden hand, and the Stone King laughed. “But the wench here will give you a fine show if you let her have her plaything back.”

“You are a fool.” The king laughed and lifted the sword out for one of his lackeys to bring up to Brienne. She clasped it in bold hands, close to her chest.

“I’m also a knight,” Jaime replied. “All men are fools, and all men are knights.” The classic line cheered the king and his smile widened

“Well said, brave Florian,” the Stone King said merrily. 

Astonished as he was, he managed to ask her about the tale as they were ushered back to their cell. It was a real legend from Tarth, as he suspected. She wasn’t so brazen as to completely make something like that up. The story was a favorite in her family; her brother had been named after Ser Galladon of Morne. 

She bit her lip. “I often thought of that tale, after you gave me the sword.” She already had it buckled around her waist, over the thick folds of her ridiculous dress. Her hand clutched the lion-headed pommel tightly.

“Am I the Maiden in this scenario?” _You are not far from being the perfect knight_ , he thought. She just smiled softly and gripped the sword tighter. 

“I can’t believe you convinced them to let you keep it,” Hunt said as they set foot back in their cell. “So when do—“ He stopped speaking abruptly, as Brienne silenced him with a look. But both he and Podrick had smiles on their faces, even if the thing remained unsaid: escape.

She slept with the sword close that night, almost hugging it close like a child with a favorite doll. _If I knew you’d like it so much, I’d have given you the matching set._ He would have to see where its twin had gotten to, whenever he got back to King’s Landing. Probably just adorning the wall behind his Uncle Kevan’s desk. Tommen was too young to wield it himself.

The next day, when they had the time, Brienne ran him through the story. She would stand in front of him, speak of his brave deeds as a warrior ( _as Galladon_ , he reminded himself sourly), and then she would bestow the sword upon him. _I’ll have to imagine quite hard to see her as the vision of the Maiden,_ he thought. The goddess was likely not a hulking, six-foot swordswench with a bandage over half her face.

In the end, he found that he had little trouble. On the stage in the Stone Kong’s throne room, the glint of the blade on her face in the dim light made her glow. She looked otherworldly standing above him. 

“As a reward for your valor, and also a-a token of my love,” she said, unbuckling the sword clumsily and passing it to him. _No, keep it,_ he thought, fleetingly. _That’s why I gave it to you, the first time round._

His hand shook a bit as he took the sword from her. Hers, too, he noticed. 

“Wield it wisely,” she said. 

“I will.” His voice was hoarse. He couldn’t look away from her. Startling eyes. Fathomless blue pools full of feeling. Skittish and beguiling at once. _She has no idea of how she looks just now_. Perhaps she did, though. Her face grew redder the longer they held their gaze.

The Stone King’s applause broke the spell. Brienne quickly turned to him and bowed low. She didn’t raise her eyes from her boots again.

Jaime saw the king’s face was streaked with tears as he, too, turned to face him. There never seemed to be any women among their captors. Are they eunuchs? Pledged to celibacy? Is that why the stone king loves the romances so much? All kings ended up the same, in some way: alone and unable to grasp the thing they really wanted despite the power they might wield.

Jaime, emboldened by the display, stepped forward to the stage’s edge. He could do his part here too.

“Your Grace, I hear you enjoy the tales of Ser Duncan the Tall as much as the romances we have played for you,” he called out. “Perhaps a few days hence, we could perform a romance from the life of Ser Duncan. I know it uncommonly well.”

The Stone King nodded enthusiastically. Jaime swept down in a florid bow. 

“I’ll just need some things, to make his shield.” He smiled. “Ser Duncan was proud of his arms.” His golden hand might be useless in a fight, but it could at least hold up a slab of wood to deflect a foe.

  
  


* * *

In their alcove that afternoon, Jaime received a heavy piece of battered wood, a jar of pitch, and a rag. Poor tools, all, but something.

Jaime had never been a great artist and he hadn’t even attempted to draw anything since he lost his right hand. The elm tree at the center of Ser Duncan’s arms looked more like a piece of meat on a skewer.

“The shooting star will look better, Ser,” Podrick assured him. The lad had been studying up, it seemed.

Brienne furrowed her brow. “Ser Duncan’s sigil was a shooting star over an elm tree? We had a shield like that hanging in the armory at Tarth. My mother’s dowry included twenty castle-trained men for the keep and the island guard. I always assumed that they brought that with them. It wasn’t a Stormlands emblem.”

Jaime put down his rag and stared at her. “Guards are an odd choice for dowry. From what house was your lady mother?”

Brienne looked down, shaking her head. All the party was now looking at her with interest; she must have felt it. “Tarth was her only true house. She was highborn, raised as a ward of the Swanns of Stonehelm. She was sent to be a lady-in-waiting to the Princess Rhaella as a girl. She had a bit of the Targaryen look, and many thought she was King Aegon’s natural daughter. His youngest sister was Lady of Stonehelm, and that didn’t help. The gossip caused too much trouble, so they sent her back to the Stormlands. The Swanns eventually arranged the match for her with my father. He was the second son, then, and they were of an age.”

The wench was full of surprises. A possible secret Targaryen, sent off with men carrying the arms of Ser Duncan! _Mine own mother was a lady-in-waiting to the future Queen Rhaella as a girl, too_ , he mused. _Perhaps they had talked together just as we do now._ Though preferably with fewer chains and more sunlight, and no useless knights of the Reach standing about staring.

“So was she?” Hunt asked. “The king’s natural daughter.” The man probably had just spent himself in his breeches with the thought of getting heirs with a drop of dragon blood on her.

Brienne shrugged. “I hardly know. She died when I was but a child. My father said he never asked her, either.”

“With your size, wench, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she was the big knight’s own get,” Jaime laughed. She scowled at him. Quite unfairly, he thought. He had only been trying to put an end to Hunt’s leering. And it was like to be true, anyway: it would explain the strange dowry, at the very least. Perhaps the honorable Ser Duncan lost his honor with a Targaryen girl. He wouldn’t be the only Kingsguard to break his vows with fruit from the castle’s gardens.

But he didn’t like that line of thought, so he struck out on another. “You know the story I aim for us to do with this shield?” he asked Brienne.

She bit her lip and nodded. “Ser Duncan and the Red Widow. I always liked that the Lady Rohanne rode to defend her own lands with bow and armor. The ending is sad, though. To find love with a dashing knight and then give it up because you have a duty to marry!” Brienne looked down at her hands again, frowning, her face growing a bit pinker, if his eyes told true. 

It was a generous reading of the story. The Red Widow had to marry to keep her castle, but she also saw a chance to end a troublesome feud with the lord of the neighboring lands by taking him as her husband. She’d likely never have settled for the lowborn Ser Duncan, anyway. He decided to let her have it, though. “That it is, but it all worked out for Lady Rohanne.” Jaime dipped the end of the rag into the pitch to resume his work. “That husband died like all the others, not long after, and she got to keep her castle and marry well, and for love, too.”

“She did?” The wench’s eyes were round, all innocent curiosity.

The star on the shield had five points—a passable likeness. He leaned back to appreciate his handiwork. “That’s the story in our family, at any rate. The great romance that spawned the great house Lannister.”

“She became a Lannister?” Jaime could see Hunt clench his fists next to her and felt a rising thrill through his chest. 

He grinned up at Brienne and nodded. “My father’s grandmother. They never met, either, but her red hair carries on—a bit of crimson alongside the customary Lannister gold.”

When she didn’t speak, he lifted the arms to display them to her. “Close enough to the real thing?” he asked. She pursed her lips, searching for a polite answer, and he let his laugh burst forth. It wasn’t, at all.

She held out Podrick’s rope belt to him, the one that usually held her awful dress in place. “Try using this so you can hold it,” she said. She smiled, wide. “When we do this story I shan’t need it. Lady Rohanne preferred breeches.”  
  


* * *

Brienne made a frustratingly poor Red Widow. Lady Rohanne Webber was matched in wits with her future Lannister husband. She was said to have exchanged clever quips with her household staff and rendered Dunk speechless with her japes as much as her beauty. 

Brienne could do none of that. Even when Jaime concocted the lines for her to speak, she couldn’t say them with enough gusto. She stammered more like he imagined the bewildered knight would have. Pity they could not change places, as the Stone King has suggested the first day. Alas, they would have to prepare for some more fruit in the face. He had convinced himself it didn’t matter, but he’d enjoyed waking without ants on his sticky cheeks these past few mornings.

There was one part of the story that she did get right, though. When it came time for the scene when Lady Rohanne dismissed Ser Duncan with a slap on the face for bringing up her late childhood love, the wench had no trouble. Jaime’s cheeks stung from their rounds of rehearsal. _Thank the gods she isn’t putting her full force into it, or I’d have a swollen lip_ , he thought.

They didn’t have time to improve it much more. When they stood before the Stone King, Jaime had to add heavy narration to keep the scene moving and prompt Brienne into saying lines that made a lick of sense.

“And then, Ser Duncan was surprised to see the lady archer he had seen in the yard walk in and demand to know what had been transpiring inside her castle!” he called. 

“I demand to know why you are speaking to my guest so!” Brienne called out at nothing. Jaime gave her an encouraging nod. She didn’t like conversing with people who were not there. In the scene were supposed to be an aging Septon, a young maester, and a feeble-minded old woman who was being passed off as the lady to Dunk as a jape. 

She did better in the battle scene near where Lady Rohanne had dammed up her neighbor’s river. She was at home yelling battle commands and negotiating with the enemy. _You’re happiest as a blushing maiden or a knight, it seems._

They came up on the last scene of the story. Ser Duncan would meet Lady Rohanne in the stables to say farewell and ride off to his next adventure, as she had taken a new husband whom he did not wish to serve. Brienne had hurried him through the scene in their practice. “He can just bow to her after refusing her offer of a new horse, and then walk off. There’s no Egg on stage with us, so no need to do anything more,” she’d said. He’d agreed, though privately he thought that the wench was leaving out the best part of the story.

 _Please let me give you something to remember me by_ , the Lady said. And then Dunk had kissed her and taken a lock of her long hair. 

In the imaginary stables, Brienne stood nervously, holding the reins of an imaginary horse. 

“And the Lady was waiting for him there, though she had not visited him since he was injured in battle,” Jaime said, approaching her. 

“S-Ser Duncan,” Brienne greeted him lamely. 

“My lady. I had not expected you, since you made yourself scarce and got a new husband before I even woke.”

“I had to marry.” Brienne‘s eyes were wide and a touch frightened. “You know that.” She held out her imaginary lead. “If you will not stay on with us, please take this horse with my thanks.” 

“I have a horse. I’ll be on my way.” He stepped close to her and placed his arm on either side of her waist. Her breathing sped up and her gaze latched onto his. _What are you doing?_ she seemed to ask. _Something stupid._ Always something stupid for her.

She had a line to say. _Please, take something to remember me by._ She said nothing—she just kept staring. He squeezed her waist with his good hand, but that didn’t spur her forward.

Jaime delivered the line for her instead. “I suppose there is something, though, that I can take to remember you by,” he said. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen. He was just supposed to bid her farewell again and go. 

Well, now the king would be expecting it. He drew his left hand to cup her bandaged cheek.

“Jaime,” she whispered, barely. 

He pulled her face down to his and kissed her. 

She let out a little cry of shock against his lips and tried to struggle back. Not too hard: Jaime kept her there easily with his arm at her waist and his fingers in her hair. It was longer but still too short to cut a lock from like in the story. He kissed her again, soft and chaste. A peculiar thing, to kiss someone and have it be soft. Cersei always felt like she was moments from devouring him. Brienne relaxed into him a bit, her hand grasping at his arm where it held her close.

He drew back. Took a breath. Kissed her a third time. _The scene will look better with a final kiss goodbye,_ he thought.

“Farewell, my lady,” he said. He stepped back once more to take her in, face flushed red and lips parted in shock. Her arms lay slack at her sides.

Jaime picked up his shield from the ground and turned away to walk to the edge of their stage.

The Stone King and his full cohort of men stood and applauded. Cheers echoed around the room.

 _She won’t speak to me at all tonight_ , he thought, and he was right.

  
  


* * *

Brienne still wasn’t speaking to him as they eased into the underground lake for their daily bath the next morning. He usually could get at least an exasperated sigh or a roll of the eyes from her at his comments while they undressed. Hunt looked entirely too pleased about this course of events. 

It was Podrick’s worried face that spurred Jaime to act. A child pitying him was really too much. He waded over to where Brienne stood apart from them, pressed into a crevice with her back turned, scrubbing her arms. The slowly flowing water rose up to their chests in gentle waves. It splashed lightly as he approached, and he saw her stop moving and stiffen.

“About yesterday,” he began. 

She sighed, somewhere between annoyance and something softer. All he could see of her were the muscles rippling under the pale, unmarked skin of her back. He hadn’t had _this_ view the last time they’d been this close in a bath.

“I meant,” he continued, “I meant no dishonor, my lady. I—the story was very moving. I was— I shouldn’t have behaved as I did.”

Brienne didn’t reply. She braced her hand up against the rock.

“I promise to behave myself when we next perform it.” 

After a moment—what a long moment!—she bobbed her head forward on her graceful white neck. “Good,” she said brusquely.

Then she dunked herself under the water. Jaime turned to go back to the others. He really didn’t trust himself to behave honorably when she burst back to the surface, water sluicing down her skin. He had been too long without a woman, and this one especially—well. 

He dunked himself under the water too, and came up spluttering. Podrick still looked at him with the same pity and Hunt with the same bemused sneer. Gods be good, he needed to get out of here.

After they had dressed, though, a moment of triumph: Brienne caught his eye. “Ser Jaime—did you happen to see the cheese yesterday at the King’s table? It looked quite delicious.”

Hunt furrowed his brow. But Jaime caught her meaning. There had only been a tiny sliver of cheese on the table. The whole banquet looked quite low, actually. Low enough that some of the Hidden Men might be absent today, on a quest for more provisions.

“Indeed I did,” he replied. “I have been craving cheese like it since I arrived here.”

She nodded thoughtfully. Hunt was no longer even paying attention, though Podrick still watched her quizzically. “Me as well. We have been here for quite some time.”

She smiled at him. Just a hint of one, in the corner of her mouth. It could have been half a scowl. Jaime’s stomach churned pleasantly at the sight.

* * *

Jaime clocked only eleven men waiting in the throne room that afternoon. The table in front of the Stone King held only a crust of bread and a dwindling bowl of withered grapes. He looked at Brienne across from him, standing on the raised stone stage in her breeches and sword, and nodded. Today was the day. 

Jaime bowed to the Stone King. “Today, we begin with Lady Rohanne and Ser Duncan’s parley at the river between her lands and those of Ser Osgrey. His liege lord’s forest is on fire, perhaps at the hand of the Lady herself. Ser Duncan hopes to convince her to aid them in putting it out and creating a truce—but he knows he may have to fight them to put it to an end.”

The Stone King frowned. Jaime was skipping halfway through the story. But this retelling wasn’t for him. 

Jaime turned to Brienne and hoisted the shield up crudely by the piece of rope tied taut at the back. “My lady. Shall we end this feud tonight?” He hoped the wench grasped his meaning. _Should we attack now?_

Brienne pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Perhaps,” she said, “but why? I have more men than you and see no reason to pull back when a victory is within my grasp.” _There are still many men here—would that be wise?_

“If we do not end this here, someone serving my lord may attack you when you least expect it. In your hall. In your bed. Feuds linger.” _Then we should attack later, when we will face fewer men._

“I‘ll take that chance, Ser,” Brienne replied. Nodding, barely. “I am well-armed and well-protected.” _Yes—that is what we will do._

He nodded back. “Then you leave me no choice, my lady. Behold this ring, bearing the sigil of the royal House of Targaryen. It belongs to my squire, the boy called Egg. He is not who he appears to be.” Brienne feigned shock, and they were back on the track of the story. One last go at being a pair of poorly-trained mummers.

Brienne was less surprised by Jaime’s kiss this the second time. He let it linger a bit longer. _Four kisses will look best,_ he thought, tracing his hand down her back and feeling her shiver. _Weren’t expecting that, were you, wench?_ He hadn’t been, either, truth be told. 

“I’m sorry to have misbehaved again,” he murmured in her ear before stepping back. Her face was as red as ever as he took her in. The blue of her eyes gleamed brightly in the flickering torchlight. He wasn’t really sorry at all.

Together, they bowed for the Stone King a final time. His applause was just as thunderous as ever, ringing off the grotto’s thick columns like a stream of pebbles on steel plate.

Podrick and Hunt were already chained up and seated when their escort—diminished, as predicted, to only three men—returned them to their alcove. Brienne and Jaime calmly let them lock their legs back in chains and depart. 

When their footsteps had fully faded away, the wench met his eye and drew her sword. 

She brought it down on her own chains first, with a screeching slice. The rusty links parted easily under her Valyrian steel, crumbling to the ground.

The noise drew the guards’ attention. The two men posted at the torches outside their door rushed in with their spears held high. Jaime raised up his crude shield to bat one away. To the other, he swung out his golden hand. It collided with his jaw with a satisfying crunch and he joined his comrade, sprawled on his back on the stone outside their cell. 

Brienne used the distraction to keep smashing away at their chains. She freed young Podrick first, and then Jaime as the boy darted out to grab hold of one of the guards’ discarded spears. 

“Hurry up, wench,” Hunt urged, still chained to the ground on the far side of the cave. 

“It’s not wise to disrespect the lady when she’s got a blade in her hand.” Jaime stepped free of his shattered manacles and raised up his shield once more. One of the guards came at them, spear aloft, but Brienne dispatched him easily with a slice to the throat.

“You do it all the time,” Hunt said. 

“No one says I am wise,” Jaime replied. Brienne plunged her sword into the chest of their second guard with a loud, grunting cry.

The deed done, the wench turned, calmly, to break Hunt free at last. He jumped out of the chains gleefully, though the manacles still hung loosely around his ankles.

From the ground, Hunt retrieved the slain guards’ remaining weapon from its owner’s bleeding corpse. To his left, Podrick Payne gripped his own spear with both hands, a steely look in his eye as he strove to keep his balance against the relatively large weapon. They moved to the mouth of their alcove. A rumble of footsteps and voices approached them steadily. 

The four of them moved into a tight circle, backs pressed up together. They readied their weapons, grounded their stances, and prepared to slash and batter and stab their way out of that godsdamned cave.

* * *

Their first steps outside the cave shocked them all. By their schedule, it should have been nightfall, but they emerged into a snow-crusted wood bathed in bright, dizzying sunlight. By Jaime’s best estimate, it was closer to midday.

The Hidden Men still hadn’t been fully defeated, so Brienne urged them on with a guttural cry. They ran through the trees, wildly, crunching sticks under their feet. Jaime only wore the tunic and breeches he arrived in, and the cold air stung his underdressed skin. The wind whipped at the cuts on his face and arms that he suffered once the spear-wielders finally burst through his shield.

None of that bothered him. The air was sweet and crisp, and not even the squelching of the mud under their feet as they fled could detract from the feeling.

They finally burst through to a more trafficked part of the wood, and their trail started to blend in with others long in the past. No noise followed them save the chirping of birds overhead. Brienne slowed and they all followed suit, panting

“Good work, Hunt,” Jaime breathed out. “You weren’t totally useless in there, after all.” He could hear Brienne’s quiet sigh behind him.

The man was hunched over, hands on his knees as he caught his breath, but he still managed to look up at Jaime and give him a foul look. “Don’t you have an army to get back to, now that we’re free? We have a quest to finish, here.”

“We are nowhere near an army nor a quest right now. Let us find our way out of this thicket while it is still light. Then we can talk about this quest.” _And other things,_ he thought, meeting Brienne’s eyes. For all she spoke of his honor, she surely didn’t think he was a man who kissed maidens and quickly parted.

So they walked. Hunt, damn the man, told it true yet again. There was an army, and he should go back. They likely thought him dead or a deserter by now, with the time they spent captive, however long that was. Tommen was on the throne in King’s landing, surrounded by ill-intentioned lords. And his conniving mother, if she even still lived after her trial. _Worry not; of course she still lives._ If he could not rejoin his army, he should certainly rejoin his family at court. He had a duty to his house and his king. 

The thought sat uneasily with him in a way it hadn’t before. What is duty when you have seen the Maiden herself with a magic sword? A fierce lady with something to remember him by? A brave warrior begat of a brave knight? And all the ways their roads have crossed. _No matter where I go, the wench is there. We’ve been entwined since before we were even born._

“This all felt like a dream,” the very same wench said to him, pulling him from his thoughts as they trudged toward what looked like a thinning of the trees ahead. Her face was free of its bandage at last; a red scar curled across her cheek like an angry flame. “A very strange one.”

“I’ve had stranger dreams,” he replied. He thought back to the vision that sent him racing to Brienne’s aid, the first time—the water lapping at his feet beneath the Rock; the armed ghosts, closing in; their burning swords, appearing from nowhere. _Or perhaps not_.

She opened her mouth to speak again. A plea of forgiveness, most likely; he could recognize the heaviness of it on her brow by now. He put his hand on her arm and shook his head. There would be time enough for that. On her quest, or on his, or even later than that still. 

_Damn the loss of love for the sake of duty_ , he thought. He would take them both in his one hand. He had always been a greedy man.

He took her hand in his. She was warm in the chilly air. He half-expected her to pull back. 

“But this was not a dream, my lady,” he said, lacing his fingers tightly with hers. “Every bit of it was real.” 

He looked up into her wondering, wordless gaze, and he knew then that their paths from here would be one and the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts:  
> 1\. Brienne has no idea why Jaime hates Hyle so much  
> 3\. Jaime and Brienne get trapped in a bunch of (or one) fairy tale(s) where they have to play the parts that they are given in order to escape.


End file.
